Women in advertisements part 2

This blog post will be about how women are portrayed in advertisements on television. The point of reference that I will be referring to is a snippet from a soap commercial that was specifically marketed towards women with the slogan “Love the skin you’re in.” The commercials would always portray a young woman with well cared-for skin, claiming that this brand of soap would preserve and care for a woman’s skin and, therefore, outward appearance. The commercial sets a standard of sorts that women of the world should conform to, and their brand of soap will, in essence, transform part of you into this “perfect woman.” This not only reinforces the stereotype that a woman should always focus on their looks, but it also puts more impressionable girls, like the younger teenage girls, under pressure to be like this ideal woman (as if teenagers didn’t have enough going on already).

To me, the slogan, “love the skin you’re in”, seems like a sneaky way to try to get girls to focus on improving their looks almost exclusively. Women, for a large part of history, were nearly always “supporters”. They were nurses, housewives, workers, and hardly ever held any kind of true power over affairs. Today, women are still held to this type of role in the minds of many Americans to some degree. This advertisement is no different. It subtly reinforces the idea that women are to focus on their looks for the enjoyment of others, while at the same time provides a powerful marketing ploy that basically claims “if you use this product, you can become an ideal woman with perfect skin.” But what is a perfect woman? Well, the answer is that there simply isn’t one. So why do American advertisers act as if there is and, consequently, put pressure upon all of womandom?

Well, I believe the answer lies solely in the hands of the American people. Specifically, the allure of money and our consumerist society has the most blame in my opinion, though the old habits and stereotypical beliefs of Americans today also play a part. The goal of every corporation in all of America is to make a profit. Without profit, people lose their jobs due to layoffs and their way of life is jeopardized. Obviously, therefore, corporations are going to use whatever they deem necessary in order to keep their business afloat. This is part of the reason that these companies use these advertisements aimed at women’s insecurities. By taking stereotypical adages and modifying them so that a product can be seen as the solution to an age old problem, companies make their product seem necessary to women of all ages. This only continues a vicious cycle-the more women buy the products under the pretense that they need it to please others with their outward appearance, the more the stereotype that women should focus on their appearance is rooted in our minds, which only serves to increase advertising’s power over the lives of women . And while all of this sounds like a heartless, terrible thing to do, (and to some extent, it is), we have to remember that these people selling these products are only doing so because they need to make a living just as much as we all do.

So what can we do to fix this problem with society? It’s a difficult question with many variables and things to consider. Is it worth weakening American industries and the economy and laying off thousands of workers due to lost profits so that women can “feel” more free from classical thought? Conversely- is it worth it for women to be oppressed and denied opportunities they could have enjoyed had they not been passed off as the weaker sex? Can the ideologies of a lifetime be simply replaced so easily? Should women feel weaker than man simply because of her double X chromosome combination? The answer to all of these questions should be a resounding “no”. But it’s not that simple. People have to put food on the table, but people have the right to have an enjoyable life as well. And if the continuing racist attitudes of the American people aren’t enough, time has shown many times that old prejudices die hard. And I am of the opinion that until the day comes that men and women are both completely equal in each and every way, (be it skin color, background, and gender(which is obviously impossible)), there will be prejudices and there will be discrepancies and there will be inherent differences between people. That’s what makes life not boring right? It’s up to us to suppress our prejudices against others, regardless of what kind of person they are, for the common good.